Tag Archives: lover

Did Galina ever seduce a man into her bed? Did she ever find herself in that mellow surrender, with an even heartbeat, as she groomed her body — the millions of skin cells she had never cared for before — as she waited for her lover to take her out on the town, for a walk or a dinner at his parent’s home; so that later she could be disrobed, explored and tasted? consumed and worshiped, cared for?

Had she ever learned what it was like to know a man so intimately she could tell what he’d drunk for dinner just by the flavors of his bodily liquids? And had Galina known elation, the best kind of which can be experienced only in the highs of being in love; and was she then able to foresee that even though loss would eventually follow — always follow — it was all worth it, while unfolding?

Probably not.

But the word of Galina’s “willingness” began to roam the village. The bachelors reconsidered the cripple’s appearance: After all, she didn’t need to be a beauty queen for frolicking in the hay. They began to scheme amongst themselves. She probably wouldn’t put up too much of a fight; or demand for a man to leap through the endless rings of fire that belong to courtship. The married men with a lusty eye took notice of her waiting on the outskirts of fields at the end of their working day. So did their women:

“Hey, Mash? Isn’t that your girl hugging the fence over there, behind the tractor?” the women approached Galina’s mother, amused at first, but not for long.

“The devil’s dragged her out again!” the old woman grumbled, embarrassed. Lord knew, she’d had her hands full with this child! “I wish any man or death would just take her already!” (Oh, you think that’s uncharitable? I’ll see what blues you’d sing if ever you found yourself stuck in living out a Russian’s destiny! That roller coaster — is no joke!)

The women of the village began to shun the cripple. A fair competition or not, for all they knew, Galina shared the same anatomy between her legs; and men, being a canine type, let’s face it, wouldn’t have the will power to say “nyet” when an opportunity of getting some — of getting any — splayed out in front of their panting mouths. No longer was Galina invited to join the girls-in-waiting on village benches whenever they saw her limping with her cane, at dusk. They didn’t brush her hair, didn’t massage her bow-like back; or reached to scratch mosquito bites through her thick woolen tights, during the summer nights. When she showed up at church, the girls dispersed, but not before hissing a few slurs that could be overheard even by a deaf-mute. As far as they were concerned, it was better to be safe than find their boyfriends venturing out for some lay on the side, which, considering Galina’s growing neediness, was always nearby and easily available.

Galina, whose accident left her stuck in the mind of a child, couldn’t understand the change in their favors. Not at least until her mother Masha broke it down one day, while scrubbing her daughter’s unattractive body on a banya shelf:

“You ought to stop blabbering like this, my poor child!” she gently rubbed a straw clump against the raised red scars on her daughter’s back. “It’s not modest for a girl, first of all, to show off like this. And then, you’re making all the females jealous.”

Picking at her bellybutton, Galina defended herself: “But I speak the truth, didn’t you know? I will marry! I am no worse than all those other silly girls!”

“Of course, of course,” Masha soothed. “Of course, you will, my child. In time, you will.”

Galina’s mother took mercy on her daughter. What else did she have going for her but those innocent fantasies of rescue via marriage and the care of a man? But the poor simpleton! She had yet to learn that guilt and pity she provoked in other women made terrible accomplices, in the end; and that a woman’s generosity ran only as thick as her man’s attentiveness.

But listen she did. The very next Sunday, Galina didn’t dress up for church. She didn’t leave the veranda where she slept in the summer, to then wait by the side of the dirt road, to catch a ride in the milkman’s horse-drawn carriage. She stopped visiting the fields, or strolling through the village in search of young girls’ congregations. It seemed she locked herself at home during daylight. And only at sunset did she begin to leave the house and joining the babushkas: those old retired women who were cared for by their children if they were lucky; and if unlucky, the women who worked until their daily duties were completed after the last cow got home. They sat on the benches, like brown sparrows along a telephone line; stretching their arthritic limbs, adjusting their kerchiefs and shacking roasted sunflower seed with toothless gums, until their fingernails turned black and their tongues were raw and scarred by salt. There they sat, watching the rest of the living go by, and calling out to either Jesus or Mother Death, for the end of their — or others’ — misery.

At first, the old women scolded the cuz:

“You ought to waste your time by the band stage, and not with us!”

“Oy, don’t even tell me!” the others chimed in. “Now, did you see just what these youngsters wear, these days?! In my time, I wouldn’t show my naked knee to even my own husband.”

“Oy, dear little lord of ours! My granddaughter chops off her skirts like this on purpose! I found the tailor’s bill.”

The old women crossed themselves. Their religiousness did not die down, not with the revolution or the Party’s teachings. Harmless to most, they worshiped openly; and these old women had a point: What else would there be left of Russia’s soul, if not its fear of Father God or Mother Nature?

There, in the companies of babushkas, Galina started to pick up the dirt on every household in the village. And what a way to make a recovery! No matter the shared elation or tragedy, most mortals couldn’t resist a juicy piece of gossip.

Quite rapidly, Galina became the go-to for the latest news: She was the younger generation’s Sputnik that circled the village — from one bench to another — to measure and deliver back the temperatures around town. The misstep of her own fictional marriage was long forgotten, and by the fall — before the hay had finished drying out and got transported into hay storage shacks; and long before the housewives completed pickling cabbage and lining up their cellar shelves with jams; before the men piled up the wood for heating the stove in the winter — Galina became every household’s most welcomed guest.

Be it from a life-long deprivation of male attention or grandma Tanya’s diagnosis of Galina’s “messed-up nerves”, cuz’s hormones went berserk as soon as she dropped out of school after the sixth grade. In all fairness, there was not much use to furthering her education, Galina’s parents presumed: After the accident, she wasn’t bound for big things any longer. And the Russian inbred understanding that one was born into one’s circumstances — and no amount of prayer, chance or hard work would transcend a citizen into a higher, more fortunate caste — spiraled Galina’s life into one of a peasant. She would be following her parents’ path, and in that, no comrade could find much tragedy.

“But I’m going to marry!” she announced one Sunday morning, on the steps of a neighboring town’s church. The other girls-in-waiting surrounded and teased her for the name of her future husband. (Competition makes women one mean lot, especially when they are those middle-ground, okay-looking ones that hold onto their men with their teeth and fear.) But Galina remained secretive, as if she were the best of Soviet spies.

“You don’t have no fiance yet!” the young women challenged. I mean: Had she fallen off the rocker?! Who did she think she was?! Engagements took months to set up. Dozens of chaperone shifts were arranged by the elders. Sunday’s best, collected by the girl’s parents throughout her life, were dug out of the familial traveling trunks, washed and ironed, and put to use. And the honing of womanly duties — by the river bank where other housewives rinsed their laundry and in the kitchen; by the married women’s lectures on the suddenly poignant topics of personal hygiene and the horrors of their wedding nights — these things demanded serious commitment and courage on a girl’s part!

“It takes a lot of work to lure a man!” the girls-in-waiting lectured the crippled simpleton. There was no way she presented much competition! And they supposed they would’ve just let her dream on, had she not perturbed them with such a silly idea, in the first place.

And they did have a point: No one had ever seen Galina starch her petticoats or outline her eyes with sharpened charcoal sold at the department store, to which one had to ride a bus for two and a half kilometers. In the later part of summer, Galina had yet to travel to other women’s homes to help them pickle cabbage or to cure pork belly in salt baths whenever a local family decided to lessen its livestock count. And neither was she known to possess any skill mending socks or warding off a bad eye. She wasn’t in the know on how to start up a stove or a banya, for a man. She couldn’t brew home-made liquor or even a jar kvas. Such skills were expected of any bride, especially from one that could’t bewitch a man based on her looks alone.

“So what?!” Galina obnoxiously defended herself. She was an innocent, but any challenge against her word of truth — and she could throw a fit which even the devil would overhear. “My dad’s already traveled to three dinners two towns over!” she continued bragging. “He says even the chairman of the collective farm over there could be interested. (He’s got a handsome son, didn’t you know?)”

How much truth there was to Galina’s aspirations — no one knew for certain. But Galina’s father — an alcoholic who freelanced around town to clean people’s outhouses, or to build new ones — was not to be taken lightly, at least by the townsmen; for quite a sizable physique did uncle Pavel have on him! The man was a giant, barely fitting into doorways; and he was gossiped to have never shared a bed with his wife because there just wasn’t enough room for two. Pavel was known to sleep in the cow stable; and that is exactly where, according to the gossip, Galina had to have been conceived.

Every night, Pavel raised hell with vodka on his breath. Galina’s mother Masha had begun to lock him out of the house; and at dawn, she searched the village’s ditches and liquor store alleys and dragged her alcoholic giant home (where she would deposit him into the cow stable yet again).

So, even though Galina’s self-proclaimed bridal status appeared absurd to most, one had to consider the fear Pavel imposed on young grooms-in-the-making. And there were other factors to consider, as well:

“She does collect a sizeable pension,” the townswomen speculated after the news of Galina’s betrothal began to spread. “Not a bad deal for a dowry!”

Others approached the subject with medical facts: “Lord knows, so deprived her womanly parts have been, for all these year! I bet she’s not too difficult to bed.”

The women giggled. The subject of sex was not a frequent one in the idealistic minds of Soviet citizens. Like anywhere else in the world, men wanted it; but it was entirely a responsibility of the women to a. to put out or to hold out, and b. protect themselves in the process. But even with one’s gynecologist, it was inappropriate to comfortably, openly discuss such matters. So, to be born pretty was a questionable blessing, for a Russian girl. But to be born smart — to know how to negotiate her worth before the broken hymen, to smoothly transition herself from under the care of her father to that of her husband — that, in the eyes of women and their mothers, was a much more important entity. (So, that part about sex being enjoyable — in some women’s lives, they never knew of it. Enjoyment was left to the other types of women: the loose ones, the ones that every town had and loved to judge; and in the cities, they were the second “wives” that some husbands kept on the side, on weeknights.)

Be kind, be kind. Must always be kind. Be kind onto others. Which is not the same as being kind onto yourself.

The silly self: It’s like a whimpering babe, looking at her with confused eyes. Why aren’t you coming for me? Don’t you know how much I need you? Poor thing, so dumb and innocent, it knows not its ignorance is bliss; but need, need, need. I need you, need you, need you — to be you.

But she forsakes it. It can make it on its own. That’s the Darwinian rule that she had obeyed for years; the rule that had been done onto her, when her mother fled her marriage and parenthood in the family’s fourteen-year old Honda to live in Portland, with a lover — a vegan milkshake store owner. For her, it wasn’t: Do onto others as you do onto yourself. (Some people can be so selfish, mother!) But she had had a life-long history of being better to others — better for them — than to her whimpering self.

There’s time enough, she thought; and maybe later she could retire to finally tend to her needs. By then, the self would be so tired (although she swore she had been tired ever since she was thirteen). But she would tire herself out enough to retire, with babies and her future husband’s nightly strewn socks all around their bedroom. Until then: She had to be kind.

A decade ago, she used to be angry. At all times, at nearly everything. “It’s my prerogative! I am what I am,” said the ego. Except that it was all wrong: She was kind. Always kind. She was the daughter of her father — a gentle man who, despite the damages done onto him, had never done it onto others; and being his next of kin came with the same unbalanced, unjust genetic mechanics of selflessness and never knowing how to ask for a favor.

But even though, in her youth, she would hold onto the anger, she felt it falling flat every single time, after the initial sensation in her body. Like an off-key tune, it was uncertain and wavering; blue and slightly disappointed. Like a story without an arc: Who needs it?

“This is how I’ve always fended for myself,” she would defend the anger to her departing lovers and move the hair out of her eyes with a furious head shiver. The lovers couldn’t understand why she insisted on living her life in so much difficulty. Not everything had to be understood so thoroughly, so completely. She “should learn to let go”.

Fine by me! Go! Go on and leave!

But they would miss her, she was sure of it; because in between all those hollow spaces of anger, she always offered kindness. Kindness pro bono. Kindness at the end of every day. And besides, she had always made it clear they were never the point of of her unrest. Instead, they could revel in her love, her compassion or her charity — all depending on the degree of availability of her kindness. So, how difficult could it be to be loved by her?

But you should go! Go ahead and go!

In those moments, she recalled an actress in a film that her mother seemed to be watching every single time she’d walked in on her. The actress was good at crying well, with no resistance in her face. And on that particular line, “Go! Just go!” the actress would close her eyes completely, like someone aware of being watched. And she, catching a glimpse of both actresses in the room, would always wonder: “Why the fuck is she wearing full make-up, in a heartbreak scene?”

The departing would never find another her, she thought to herself; and she was right: They wouldn’t. But with all the others — who weren’t her — things were slightly easier and more vague. Others left room for misinterpretation, so that the lovers could live out their love in mutual illusions, until the first point of cross-reference. Hearts could be broken then, expectations — disappointed. But they would’ve had some wonderful times by then.

And yes, with time, easy became boring; but boring — gave room to calm. And into the calm, it was easier to retire. Because in the end, we were all simply so tired.

So, be kind. Must always be kind. She almost terrorized her lovers with kindness, which was shocking to the recipients, in every beginning. It made her unusual, unlike all the others. The lovers could not have suspected, though, that she was merely collecting a reserve of it for when the going got harder, because it always would; and because the first time the anger came up in each affair, it stayed. One note. No arc. Just co-habituating with the rest of her, not necessarily parasitically.

Some lovers would attempt to rescue her from the anger. (Sometime, infatuation liked to pose as love.) These more ambitious ones would suffer the most, from her resistance, from the complexity of her constant devotion to truth. And only when they, finally tired from it — or of it — raised their first objections, she flaunted all the moments of previous kindness in her self-defense.

How she hated herself for turning calculating, pitiful and shrill! After those endings, she would have to find healing in closure that took more time; because self-forgiveness was harder to summon by someone who did onto others better, than she did onto herself.

But they all would remember her kindness at least, she told herself. In the end, they all would. And, again, perhaps, she was right. But no one could ever survive the lack of self-love.

I could do this one, why not? She’s kinda cute. Hot, actually. She’s hot, and that’s so much better anyway. She’s not one of those gorgeous girls who thinks she’s outta my league. Fuck those bitches! They get too expensive, anyway. But this one is not like that, man. I wonder if she’s the type that doesn’t think she’s beautiful at all. Which makes it even easier.

I should ask her out. ‘Cause I could probably do this one, easily… Hands down!

Okay, maybe not “easily”. She called me “Patrick” last night.

My name is Dave.

Shit, man! Just look at her! Leaning over the edge of the bar, so obviously flirting with Stan. Stan is old, but he can get a girl nice ‘n’ liquored up, I guess. I tolerate Stan. And that’s as far as I go with people.

Stan is, like, seriously deprived of love. His woman is a total bitch to him, you can tell by the way he cranes his neck whenever he talks to a broad. Any broad. Like a fuckin’ abused dog that expects to be hit between his eyes for chewing on her slipper, just ‘cause he just wanted to taste the sweat of her feet. Stan’s woman must castrate him every day, for breathing too loudly or for not looking the part, or some shit. And I bet she thinks she should be with someone better.

Look at him! Just look at him now! God! He’s shaking just ‘cause this girl is nice to him. God…

I hate dogs!

Maybe Stan’s got a giant one. Chicks always say that it’s not important. But that’s just bull, if you ask me. I’ve seen ‘em looking at me when there is no point of going back and I’m staring them in the face, erect but less than a handful. Nerve-racking enough to shrink anyone.

“Ohm,” they say and look up at me with that face, as if I got them the wrong thing for Christmas.

I wonder if it’s those fuckin’ pills. I told John, I’d rather be bald. But then, his woman chimed in: “Jenna”.

“I wouldn’t fuck Prince William, with that hair of his,” she said.

First of: Who wants to date a chick called “Jenna”?! Or “Trisha”? “Trish”. Sounds like a diner waitress with three grown children by another man, at home.

Anyway, “Jenna” has this habit of going out to our fridge, in the middle of a night, in nothing but John’s wife-beater. She’s a bartender, comes over after her shift. Drunk. I hear them fuck. I try to tune ‘em out, so I blast some ESPN, or fucking Transformers 3, I don’t care. Whatev. But it’s like this chick’s got police sirens for her moans. And the really fucked-up thing is: They really turn me on. It’s like having a live porn sound-feed from across the hall. So, I’ve started waiting for John to finish his first round; come out to the living-room, turn on the TV and I watch her, as she runs to the bathroom. (Why do chicks always have to pee after sex? Does urine kill sperm? I fuckin’ hope so!) But then, she comes out, all flushed and glossy from splashing water on her face and thighs; all the fattier places bouncing on her body.

John told me “Jenna” likes big ones. Makes her ears plug up, she says. And she’s got this vein that pops out in the middle of her forehead. Makes John worried she’ll hemorrhage to death on day, if he keeps winding up her sirens like this. So yeah, it matters, he says. Size matters.

“Jenna” lies to my face. Says it’s all about the man’s hair:

“I’d rather fuck a bald guy than Prince William.”

So, these days, whenever she comes over, I watch TV with my cap on. “Jenna” has these sick nails and she always paints them red; and she likes to rough out the top of a man’s head, then pull his face into her breasts and smother his silly grin with them. But not me! Not this guy!…

Ah, shit! Just look at this one though! She’s still talking Stan up and I can see that jittery part of her thighs from the way she hangs on the bar. This one is hot. Kinda like “Jenna”. That’s the problem.

And I can tell she is not like one of those chicks back in college who liked to brag about sex all the time and confuse the attention they aroused — for being liked. Those chicks had seriously low self-esteem. But this one doesn’t talk sex. She moves sex. And we are all deprived.

The one that had preceded Nina suffered from a permanent tension of his vocal cords. He had picked me up at the Santa Monica Library — a house of glass and metal, and the place of rest for many a homeless in the City where no one could ever find a home. Not really. Sure, one had a house, or a place. A joint. A roommate situation. But to be at home — one had to be willing to belong.

“Hmm. That’s an interesting pullover you’re wearing,” said the young creature, at the Library, smug with studied confidence. Not natural at all.

I granted him a single glance-over: An overachiever, to a tee. Something about him lacked the swagger of those whose choices and whims were endorsed by family’s name or a bank account (which ever one had more clout). Yes, still: He tried. Immediately, I knew: He, who poured this much attention into his subject — who reached too far and tried too hard, straining beyond the plasticity of his compassion (which would already be magnificently excessive), he who choked with forced praise — would rarely be comfortable in silence. Not in the mood for busy talk, I changed the subject whilst looking for an exit:

“What are you reading, mate?” I threw over my shoulder. The echo played a round of ping-pong with my sounds between the glass walls of the reading room. Ate, ate, ate. To which, a studying nerd deflated his lungs, somewhere in the corner:

“SHHHHHH!”

Neither looking back at the distressed prisoner of knowledge nor wanting to look ahead at this new lingering aggressor against silence, I focused on the hardbound books with which he had been shielding himself, with brown, hairless arms. The fading edges of their cloth binding would smell of mold at the spine, and then of dehydration from the air and sun; overexposure to the oil of human fingers and the salt of readers’ tears, surprised to have their empathy awoken by someone’s words: Still alive, that thing? Because the heart was usually the last one to give up. And then, the lungs: SHHHHHH.

The aged tomes in the man-child’s arms promised to titillate my ear more than his words. Words, words.

“What am I reading?! Oh. Um. Nothing…” (Oh, c’mon! The nerd in the corner was turning red, by now, from the justified resentment at being invisible to us, as he had been his whole life.) “Well. Oscar Wilde and Evelyn Waugh, actually.” The man-child finally spat out, then hesitated, gave this cords another straining pull: “I know! Not butch enough — for a straight male!” He nearly choked there! Words, words, word.

Oh. One of those: Simultaneously eager and tormented! The one to flaunt his politics out loud, just so that the others didn’t get the wrong idea. Because whatever happened in beds he visited (even if out of the other lover’s loneliness or boredom) would be the reason for his later torment. The guilt, the loathing. The other obstacles to self-esteem. And he would wear them like a frilly scarf from Urban Outfitters, meant to accent things — to draw attention, and perhaps make him more “interesting” — but not to serve the very original function. The it-ness of the thing was lost.

With me, the man-child, worked his words (words, words) to become liked enough. And after one eve of heavy breathing and pulsating blood flow, perhaps, he would be asked to stay. I questioned, though, if he knew exactly what he wanted: sex — or its statistic? The mere happening of it? Sex was a fact of his hormonal balance; and if he could help ignore it, he would move out of his body entirely and occupy his head. But for right now, the boy still had to get some, however accidentally.

The love you take — is equal…

He took, he claimed. And if he didn’t, he would storm out of sentences with scorn of having to sublimate his desires, yet again. Alas, the world was so unfair.

“But you!” Against the walls, he kept thumping the words like racket balls. The poor boy was trying! “You! — must be so erudite!”

“SHHHHHH!”

“Or really?” I hissed, considering the possibility of the nerd’s heart attack for which I was not willing to bear the responsibility. At least, not on a Monday night. “Is it the pullover?” I asked and pushed him out of the way. Over, over, over.

The man-child lingered, then began to laugh with that obnoxious howl meant to draw attention. Again, too much. Too hard. So insincere! Petrified! SHHH! SHHHHHH…

“He sounds messy!” diagnosed Taisha, while she herself was negotiating the rush hour traffic. It was always rush hour, somewhere, in this City. Her windows rolled down — I could hear the screech of others’ breaks in the lazy heat of another smoggy afternoon. If one survived the mind-numbing dissatisfaction at having to just sit there — while getting nowhere and watching life slip out thorough the vents of fans — half of LA would give up on the idea of stepping out again, that night.

“I think I’m coming down with something.”

“…It’s food poisoning, I think.”

Like nowhere else, here, people were prone to canceling plans. To giving-up.

“I’m waiting for the cable guy. It sucks!”

“My cat is sick.”

Each night, the people landed in their private spaces, shared with other people or their own delusions. They heated up some frozen options from Trader Joe’s and locked their doors agains the City.

I listened to the life force of LA: Still plentiful, it breezed through all four open windows of Taisha’s Prius. This place — a forty four mile long conveyer belt that moved things along, living or inanimate (it moved lives along); and if one could not keep up, the weight of failure would remain under one’s breath. The City of Lost Angels. The City of Lost Hearts.

“Now listen! Don’t do ANYTHING! until I see you!” Taisha ordered me; and although my heart maintained its pace, it winced at little, subjected to her care. “Don’t sleep with him! You’re dangerously close to some stupid choices, right about now!” (She was referring to the draught of my sexuality. When I blew out the thirty candles of my birthday cake, the promiscuity that granted me some fame, was also put out, surprisingly and seemingly for good. Into that space, I started cramming wisdom.)

“I am one lucky bastard — to have you love me like you do,” I responded, singing my words halfway through the sentence.

Oh, how she fought it! My dear Tai! All business and busyness, the girl refused to slow down for sentimentality’s sake: “Oh, you, white people! Ya’ll get so mushy ‘round love. My people, back in Kenya…”

“Ah, jeez! Alright!” I interrupted, misty-eyed. “I’ll talk to you.”

Taisha would be talking, still, like “peas and carrots” in the mouths of actors. But I could hear her smile break through. Humanity still happened here, amidst perpetual exhaust and one’s exhausted dreams. Somewhere along the stretched-out, mellow land attacked by bottom-feeders and the self-diluted who knew not why exactly they made a run for here, but mostly headed West in a trajectory that had been paved by others — it happened. Some stayed, too tired or too broken of hearts. And they comprised my City.

“Everyone seems so shallow here!” the man-child (he would be from Connecticut, but of course!) was overlooking the crawling traffic, like a Hamlet in his soliloquy. And from the upstairs patio table we’d taken while splitting a bottle of ginger ale (for which I’d paid), he seemed to be in perfect lighting. The row of yellow street lights had suddenly come on above his head. The dispersed taillight red reflected on his face from the West-bound traffic. The boy was slowly sipping — on my drink.

“Big spender!” I could already hear the voice of my Kenyan Confucius. “RUN! Run while you can!”

“But YOU! You seem like you’re here by accident!” His terrorism by kindness did have one thing going for it, called lucky timing.

“I am so lonely,” I wanted to let out, right underneath the yellow light now holding conferences of moths and fruit flies. At a table nearby, a girl blogger clacked away on her snow-white Mac, while glancing at us from underneath her Bettie Page bangs. What does it feel like — to be written?

“What if I slept with him?” I thought. It’s better to have loved…

Except that: I had turned thirty. And I could no longer take for granted the ghosts of previous lovers that crowded a bedroom during a seemingly inconsequential act. A Greek Chorus of the Previously Departed. And then, the heart of one participant, at least, would wake up — with yearning or having to remember its wrong-doings or when the wrong was done to it — and things turned messy. So, sex was never simple; especially for this one, who now tipped the last drops of my ginger ale into his glass.

“You wanna drink?” Familiarity had started working on my sentences already, like cancer in my marrow. Still, IT — could have happened, still. IT would have started with a shared drink. “A beer, or something?” I tensed my body to get up.

“Nah, thanks. I’m in AA.”

I looked at him: His eyes began to droop like a basset hound’s: Just ask me — of my suffering. The frilly Urban Outfitters scarf picked up against the gust of wind. My chair scraped away from him — and from the table now mounted by issues of his angst. My entertained desire shriveled.

Yet still — I stayed!

When he and I made loops around the neighborhood, dumbfounding the drivers at each intersection with our pedestrian presence. Through windshields, I would find their eyes — like fish in an aquarium, unable to blink — and they calculated the time they had to make the light without plastering our bodies with their wheels. Preferably. The man-child let me lead the way. A winner!

And still — I stayed.

I stayed when I had climbed onto a stone fence, and now even to his height I waited for the lean-in. The boy hung back, decapitating his hands at his wrists by sticking them into his pant pockets. His words continued to pour out: His praise came up along my trachea, with bubbles of that shared ginger ale, which now tasted of rejected stomach acid.

But still. I stayed. I waited. Because sometimes, to those who wait — life grants, well, nothing. And nothing, sometimes, seemed to be the choice of greater courage.

“She never rains. The poor girl, She’s all cried out.”

Nina’s hair, unless right after the shower, shot out of her head in spirals of prayer. Of course, she hated it. A black woman’s hair: Don’t touch it, unless you’re done living altogether. The glory of it was slightly confused by auburn shades inherited from Nina’s Irish mother. And underneath that mane — sometimes set afire by the sun’s high zenith — and right below her smooth forehead, two eye, of furious green, devoured the words that she had been reading to me from headstones.

“Which one is that?” I asked and walked to her side of a burgundy granite, with jagged edges, still shiny like a mirror. It had to have been a pretty recent death.

She wrapped herself further into her own arms and chuckled, “No one, silly. I just said that. About this City.” Like an enamored shadow, I hung behind her. “This would be the perfect time for rain. Except that She — is all dried out, you see?” The furious green slid up my face. “But She — is really something, isn’t She?”

It was indeed refreshing, for a change, to be with a woman so free from posing. Of course, I’d witnessed moments of vanity on her before: When her pear-shaped backside lingered at the boudoir before she’d finally slip in between the covers and curve around me. And all the open spaces — she occupied by flooding.

I wondered if she knew the better angles of herself. Because I saw them all. When in an unlikely moment of worrying about my long-term memory’s lapse, I whipped out my phone and aimed its camera at Nina’s regal profile, she must’ve been aware that her beauty was beyond anything mundane. For I had studied many a pretty girls before, the ones with the self-esteem of those who have never been denied much. But Nina’s beauty wrote new rules, of something warm and living. It came from occupying her skin with no objections to its shape of color; from delicate sensibility and softness, like the wisp of a hair across a lover’s face. But there was also: strength. And heritage. And underneath my touch, she moved.

It’s long past midnight in Warsaw. There is a new couple that has moved into the apartment across the street.

For the last two days, it has been sitting empty, with the curtains open and the stark white mattress in the middle of the living-room. On the first of the new year (today), they have appeared: He’s tall, with pepper and salt hair; she’s lovely. And even though I cannot see the details of her face underneath her bangs, I can imagine the high cheekbones and the doll-like roundness that I’ve been seeing in the store window reflections of the last twenty years.

I watch them from my kitchen, while drinking coffee. I am jet-lagged.

The curtains remain open and the yellow light of a single lamp is getting some assistance from the screen of their TV. They’re eating dinner that consists of corn on the cob and one bucket of KFC (so very Eastern European, as I have come to learn). Occasionally, they half turn their faces to each other:

“You want some tea?”

Or,

“For what time, you think, we should set the alarm clock, in the morning?”

I leave them be and wander from one room to another to check on our drying laundry. The guidebook never promised us domestic amenities, so the discovery of a washing machine in our kitchen came as a complete surprise. The dryer button is jammed on it though, but considering I have arrived here with my arrested expectations from post-Soviet Russia, circa 1997, I am extremely grateful for the dignified living standards with which this city has accommodated us.

Besides, the absence of a dryer — I find romantic. I run my hands along the cloths from my and my lover’s body, earlier drenched from running through this cold city, and wonder what it would’ve been like if I were to enter my womanhood in my birth place. Would I have known the grace of unconditional love and the finally non-tumultuous forcefulness of me? Would I’ve grown up kind, or would the much harder life of my homeland have taken a toll on my character and aged me, prematurely? And would I have the privilege of choices that make up my identity now, still generous and grateful for the opportunities I’ve found abroad?

Identity. In my impression of the world, this word comes from the American ventricle of me. But after this week’s reunion with my father, who never had the privilege to watch me make the choices that led me to the woman that I am, I am surprised to find myself resemble him so much. Despite the separation of nearly two decades: I am my father’s daughter. Of course, by some self-written rules, it’s presupposed that I have traveled further in my life than father ever did in his. I’ve been exposed to more world, and in return, it taught me to question twice all prejudices and violations of freedom. But what a joy it’s been to find that, in my father’s eyes, life is only about truth and grace and justice; and matters of identity, for him, have no affect on any person’s freedoms.

I wander back into the kitchen, sit down into my father’s chair. Thus far, it’s been the greatest pleasure of my life to watch him eat good food that I have made. While eating, dad is curious and — here’s that word again — grateful:

“What’s that ingredient?”

And,

“What do you call this bread?”

And I can see him now: slouching just a little above his meal, in this chair; shaking his head at the meal that he finds to be gourmet, while to us — it is our daily bread. I have to look away when with childlike amusement he walks his lips along a string of melted cheese:

Here is to more such meals, my most dear love, and to the moments that define a life! that must define MY life!

The couple in the window across the street has finished their meal. The table is still cluttered with settings, crumbled paper napkins and a red bucket whose iconography — although recognizable — is somehow different from the red-and-white signs that pollute the American skyline. The couple is now on the couch: She’s sitting up and removing pillows from behind her back, then tossing them onto the wooden floor. He is fetching two smaller ones, in white pillow cases, from the bed. Together, they recline again and progressively tangle up into each other, like lovers who have passed the times of dire passion and landed in that even-tempered place of loving partnership.

The light of the TV is now the only one illuminating their spartan room. From where I stand, now drinking a cup of black tea (still, jet lagged), I only see the back of his head and her hand that has ended up near his right shoulder. Occasionally, he half turns his face toward her, then turns toward the flickering blue light again:

“Are you comfortable, my love?”

Or,

“Would you rather watch the news?”

I walk into my bedroom to fetch my computer. The yellow light follows me from the kitchen and slowly dissipates as I approach the next doorway. It, ever so lightly, hits the exposed leg of my sleeping lover. I think I study him, but instead the mind gives room to memories of similar moments and visions. And in that suspended history of us, I reach into the drawer.

You, silly. It’s you — but from a decade ago. A memory of you reiterated by someone else (who’s always claimed to have his own interpretation of you). The evidence from the past that you weren’t too proud of, to begin with.

Here it is, you! The ghost of you, desperately trying to keep your head above the water, with no parental guidance or a homeland to which you could go back. (Not that you’d want to, though: Those bridges have been burnt, their ashes — buried with your hind legs.)

You, talking yourself out of an encyclopedia of uncertainties and doubts, every morning; wishing to be someone else — anyone but you! — then blackmailing your gods for any type of a new delusion to lap up.

You, clutching onto love — any love, how ever selfish or unworthy — just so that you could feel an occasional liberation from the drudgery of life.

This is exactly why I’ve learned to not stay in close contact with my exes: I rarely enjoy a stroll down the memory lane. Shoot, I don’t even like a drive by through that lane’s neighborhood, while going at ninety miles an hour.

Because I’d rather think of it this way:

“It happened, thank you very much. But I don’t ever want for it to happen — again. I myself — don’t want to happen. I repeat: NEVER again.”

But ‘tis the season; and somehow, despite my good behavior this year, a single message from a former love has managed to slip in — and it appeared on my screen. He has been reading my fiction, he says, and has a few objections to it. And could he, he wonders, tell his story: He wants to contribute. He, as before, has his own interpretation he’d like to share.

And could I, he says, write about something else: Like good memories? Remember those? Because what he remembers of you — is sometimes good. So, he, he says, would like to see you in that light.

“‘You’? ‘You’ who? ‘You’ — me?”

Me don’t have much to brag about, in my past. Me is humbly grateful for her former opportunities, but the opportunities of mine now — are so much better!

And me has fucked-up plenty. (Don’t YOU remember? You — were there.) But then again, isn’t what one’s youth is for: To live and learn? Well. Me — has done plenty of that. And as for the suggested good memories, if it’s up to me (‘cause it is MY fucking fiction, after all!) — me would much rather remember the mistakes, just so that me don’t ever repeat them again.

Normally, in the vacuum of my blissful isolation from my exes, I do sometimes think of me — but now. The current me: The one that has survived. The one with enough intelligence and humility to summon her fuck-ups and to make something out of them (like knowing better than to repeat them).

And so, behold: A better me.

A kinder and more mellow me. The me who knows how to get a grip, when to summon her patience; and also the me who knows how to let go. Me who allows for her time to have its natural flow, who knows how to free fall into the tumbling, passing, speeding minutes of her life with gratitude and ease.

The ME who’s finally proud to be — her: The HER who knows how to live.

Like any woman that I’ve known, in my life, I wonder about aging. What will I look like, after the decline begins? Will I be kind enough to not compete with youth? Will I be loved enough to never fear the loss of tautness of my skin or breasts?

And when occasionally I panic at the discovery of a gray hair or a previously unwitnessed wrinkle, I bicker at my own reflection and I begin to research remedies. Nothing too invasive, but something with a bit more help.

But NEVER — I repeat: no, never! — do I, for a second, wish to be the younger me, again. It happened already — I happened — thank you very much. But I am good with never happening again.

I’d much rather want to be her: The current me. The one who’s loved, respected and adored and who knows how to accept it, for a change. The one who gives her kindness, but only until she starts losing the sight of herself. And then, she’s smart enough to stop.

She who refuses to give up her younger self’s beliefs in the general goodness of people, still; but who is too wise to not give up on those who do not know how to be good to themselves.

“Make a wish,” he said. “If you wish for something good — it WILL come true.”

I held the ring he gave me in the middle of my palm, and I stared at the open space caught in the center of its beaded circle. It was made out of a tightly wound spiral of a single metallic line, as thin as a single hair on a horse’s mane. I thought of my grandmother’s cuckoo clock whose pendulum she had stopped winding-up, suddenly one night.

Her husband, a retired fisherman, had gained himself a habit in his old age: He’d climb up to the roof above their attic to watch the sunset every night. There, he would witness the reunion of two unlikely lovers: The sun would give up the ambition of its skies and melt into the waters of the Ocean beneath; and every such reunion would illuminate the old man’s eyes with colors of every precious stone in the world.

There, up on the rooftop, my grandmother would find him, when she returned home from work.

“My little darling boy!” she’d gosh. “You’re too old for this game.”

She was eleven years his junior; but after a lifetime of waiting for the Ocean to return her lover, she hadn’t managed to forget her worries. And even with his now aged body radiating heat in their mutual bed each night, she would dream up the nightmares of his untimely deaths.

“I’ve died so many times in your sleep, my baby lark,” he joked in the mornings, “I should be invincible by now.”

Still, the woman’s worrisome wrath turned her into a wild creature he preferred to never witness: They were unlikely lovers, after all. So, he’d smirk upon her scolding, obey and lithely descend. Then, he would chase my grandmother into the corner bedroom of their modest hut. And she would laugh. Oh, how she would laugh!

One day, after she scolded him again, he slipped; and as she watched each grasp betray him, she suddenly expected that her lover could unfold his hidden wings and slowly swing downward, in a pattern of her cuckoo clock’s pendulum, or a child’s swing. But he was an injured bird: That’s why he could no longer go out to sea.

Upon the permanently wet ground, he crashed. And on that night, she stopped winding-up the spiral inner workings of her clock.

“Well? Did you make a wish?” the old Indian merchant asked me after I slipped his gift onto the ring finger of my left hand.

The beads rolled on the axis of the spiral and slid onto my finger like a perfect fit. On its front, four silver colored beads made up a pattern of a four-petalled flower, or possibly a cross. I bent the fingers of my hand to feel its form against my skin. Under the light, the beads immediately shimmered.

“Well? Did you?” the old, tiny man persisted.

Instead of answering him, I pressed the now ringed hand against my heart and nodded.

“See. It is already coming true,” he said.

He was by now sitting in a lotus position on top of a lavender cloud. It had earlier slipped out from behind the room with bamboo curtains, in the doorway, and it snuggled against his leg like a canine creature. Before I knew it, the old man got a hold of the scruff of the cloud’s neck, and he reached down below — to help me up.

His hand was missing a ring finger. How had I not noticed that before? I studied his face for remnants of that story. But it was not its time yet, so I got lost in between the wrinkles of his brown skin and followed them up to his eyes:

His eyes were two small suns, with amber colored rays. The center of each iris was just a tiny purple dot, too narrow to fit in my reflection. I looked for it though until the suns began to spin — each ray being a spoke on a wheel — faster and faster.

The spirals of the old man’s watch began unwinding, and we floated up through the layered clouds of time, up to the sunroof. With a single gesture of his arm, the man unlatched the windowed frames. He sat back down, shifted until his sit bones found their former markings in the lavender cloud; and when he turned to face me, I realized he had become a young lover of my own: with jet black hair and a pair of smirking lips of that old fisherman who had stopped the spiral of the clock inside my grandma’s hut.

“I had a feeling about you,” he said and buried his four-fingered hand inside my loosened hair. “You are the type to always wish — for good.”

It seemed like she was waiting for someone. By the bench, at the top of a hilly lawn, the bottom of which met with the narrow gravelly passage occupied by the late morning joggers, she stood there, barely noticed by others. An iron railing stretched on the other side of the path, and the bright blue waters of Monterey Bay seemed calm. A forest of boat masts kept swaying in their metronome rhythm. They clanked against each other with the hollow sound of empty water buckets or rusty church bells. The shallow waters by the shore were navigated by a couple of paddle boarders and glossy baby seals.

Was it her beloved heading home? Or was this just a mid-stop where she’d regroup for the next glorious flight of her freedom loving soul? She stood like she belonged to no one — but the call of her nature, immune to the voices of fear or doubt.

The Northbound wind frolicked with her straight white hair. I didn’t expect to see that texture on her body, but when I saw the handful of silky strands fly up on the side of her head, I stopped. She remained motionless: still and proud, slowly scanning the horizon with her focused eyes.

Just a few meters down, I myself had rested by a statue of a woman. I couldn’t tell how long ago I had left my room without having a preplanned route through this small town by the Bay; for I myself had come here to rest in the unlikely lack of my own expectations — my fears, worries and doubts — and I had let the movements of the sun determine my activities that day. So in its highest zenith, I departed from the four walls of my inn after the laughter of children — hyper way too early and fearlessly attacking the nearby pool — woke me up.

I began to run slowly at first, crossing through the traffic of drivers used to the unpredictable characters of pedestrians. Not once did I resort to my city habits of negotiation by scowls or passive-aggressive gestures. I bypassed the elders slowly walking, in groups, along the streets of boutique stores with hand-written signs for Christmas sales. The smell of caffeine and caramel popcorn would trail behind young couples on their romantic getaways. The joggers of the town were few and far between; so when I reached the narrow passage of the tree alley along the shoreline, I picked up my pace.

The wind kept playing with my fly-aways and untangling my tight hair bun. A couple of times I turned my head in the direction of its flow and saw the mirage outlines of my most favorite Northern City.

“By the time I get there, I shall be free of fear,” I always think but then return to the predetermined pacing of my dreams.

I noticed the statue’s back at first: A colonial dress peaked out from underneath a cape, and both were captured in the midst of their obedience to the same Northbound wind.

“A statue of a woman. That’s a rarity.”

And I walked up to her.

It seemed like she was waiting for someone. Up from the pedestal, she focused her gaze on the horizon. Her face was calm but gripped by prayer. I knew that face: It belonged to a lover who trusted that the wind would bring him back to her, unscathed. And even if he were injured on his odyssey or tempted by another woman’s feasts, she trusted he would learn and be all the better for it, in the end. Against her shoulder, she was leaning a wooden cross made of tree branches.

Santa Rosalia: The Italian saint of fishermen. She froze, in stone, in a perpetual state of beholding for other women’s men. Throughout centuries, so many freedom-loving souls must have departed under her watch, and I could only hope that most of them returned. But when the sea would claim them, did other women come here to confront her or to collect the final tales of their men dying fear-free?

I walked while thinking of her face. And then, I saw the other awaiting creature.

When she began to walk downhill, she’d test the ground with each step. With a balletic grace she’d stop at times, and study the horizon. The wind began to tease her silky hair. It took figure eight routes in between her legs, and taunted her to fly.

And so she did: On a single rougher swoosh of the wind, she stretched her giant stork-white wings, gained height and began to soar, Northbound and fear-free.

“There are no events but thoughts and the heart’s hard turning, the heart’s slow learning where to love and whom. The rest is merely gossip, and the tales for other times.” —

Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

He was young — oh, so young! — but not convoluted at all, which is a rarity in itself. He sat with his body turned toward me at a 45-degree angle, playing with the ice cubes on the bottom of his tall glass; but never letting go of me, with his eyes.

“What are you drinking?” he started up. I could feel it with my skin cells: The kid was NOT into chatter much. He actually wanted to know.

“Um,” I chuckled and looked at my ice-less glass. “Tomato juice.”

And I nodded. I am not a barfly, mostly for that very same reason: I don’t drink. So, I nodded while bracing myself for the irony some tipsy idiot was about to point out.

The kid picked-up my glass and he sniffed it.

That scene! It reminded me of that scene, in a quirky film about doomed love: She asks him for a piece of chicken, and without his answer, takes it. Just like that! She reaches over and takes a chicken leg from his paper plate; and he is immediately disarmed at her lack of pretense and the intimacy at which he’d had to do no work, whatsoever.

The kid put down my glass, exactly into the water ring it had marked on my bev nap earlier. Then, he nodded and pouted with his lower lip:

“That’s cool!” he said, without showing me his version of a deprecating smirk.

My self-defense was unnecessary, here; and all the jokes at my own expense popped, like soap bubbles on a child’s palm.

I had been approached by men at bars before (and I had been approached by women, as well). Most of the time, with their courage slightly loosened by liquor, they negotiate their desire immediately. But they’re never drunk enough to say it bluntly:

“I want your sex,” for instance.

Or:

“I just want to fuck around, for bit. Is that okay?”

Instead, they loom, while flirting clumsily and waiting for me to bite the bait. It’s amusing, most of the time, to observe the habit of other people to get in their own way. (It’s also the reason I don’t drink: I like to watch, instead. That; and the fact that my sober tendencies of getting in MY own way — are already quite sufficient; and I needn’t be drunk to get a clearer look at myself.)

Soon enough though, the men get distracted: Their drunken charm refuses to work on me. What they don’t realize is that their honesty might’ve gotten them a lot more.

Eventually, they move on though — to someone easier, I suppose. But while they loom, my drunken courtiers sneak peaks at other barflies — and butterflies — with whom their charm wouldn’t happen in vain. They’re always pretty, those other girls, and more willing, perhaps. So, I let the men move on quickly:

“Go loom elsewhere, honey. It’s okay. Really.”

But this kid: He was different. He would study the other women openly, and sometimes, at my own direction.

“SHE — is gorgeous!” I’d mutter into my thin straw; and so, he would look, in silence.

What was he looking at, I would wonder? Was it the silky shimmer of her brown shoulders? Was it the beauty mark revealed by a backless dress? The curvature of her rear? The endlessness of her naked legs leading up to heaven?

What was it like to be so young — and to want so much?

So, he would look at the other women, but then return to me — always. He was one of those: The type that tended to hit things right on the nose. He would ask me questions that would make me shift in my seat; and under his examination, I, too, began studying the girl in a wraparound dress with no underwear lines, anywhere along her body. I was studying — me.

I surprised myself when I asked him about his mother. I could feel her, distances away, praying that her son was under the care of only good people. Only good women. She would have a confident face, I imagined, just like her son’s: With no ticks to betray her habit of getting in her own way. I couldn’t possibly know the extent of her courage yet; what it was like to let her child leave her watch. But I was pretty sure that if I were a mother, I too would hope — and I too would pray! — for the goodness of other people. Of other good women.

He spoke of her willingly. It was unlikely for a young man to be aware of the sacrifice a mother must make. But this kid — this young man — understood the courage of a woman’s heart: The courage it took — to be a good one!

“I’m not sure what it is…” he would say to me later. “I’m not sure what it is — about you.”

His hands would be steady: They knew the common crevices along a woman’s body; but he had yet to learn the specificity of mine.

“It’s just sex,” I’d tell him, “and that’s okay. Really.” And I would cradle his head, brush his hair and soothe his eyelids.

He was under a care of one good woman. And the good woman, waiting, praying for him from distances away, had absolutely nothing to worry about, that night.

Nothing, as in: I wake up late due to the afternoon sun blazing through my window. (The shades are helpless against this blazing.) I wake up to sunlight, and not to the monotonous tune of my alarm clock. I wake up to another day. (I’m helpless against waking.)

And when I do wake up, I stay in bed, despite the habitual bounce of my thoughts about the stuff that needs to get done. It’ll get done. Eventually. So, I stay in bed, reading.

The more fragmented my schedule, the lesser are the chances of my reading a book, these days. A whole book: Not a book of vignettes by a Parisian melancholic, or of poetry by an angry American alcoholic. A book, a long novel, or an epic story hasn’t rested in my palms in a long time. I still read though — but of course! — in between the fragments of my day. But I never read in bed.

But today: I do. Because I’m doing — nothing.

Yes, I’m doing nothing:

Nothing, as in: I take a scorching hot shower with a bar of handmade soap with tea tree oil and oats. It smells like the pine tree bathhouses that my people would heat up for each other, late at night — before a generous dinner but after the hard work — and they would come out with red and calm faces of innocence, long ago traded in for survival.

I take the first sip of my black coffee: I’m feeling peckish, I must say. I haven’t eaten the first meal of the day, and I’m about to skip the second. But there is no way I’m cooking today: Because I’m doing — nothing.

Nothing, as in: I walk to the farmers’ market. I do not drive. Instead, I accompany my kind man who tells me the fables from his previous day. His long stories. As we walk, we study the neighborhood: The homes that sit at an architectural intersection of San Francisco and Venice Beach. Homes with abandoned toys in their play pins and enviable tree houses decorated with Chinese lanterns. Homes with old vintage cars in their gravel covered driveways and disarrayed trash bins at the curb. Homes I’ve promised to build for my people — my kind people — and my child.

I watch an older couple approaching us: I wonder what I would look like, when I’m older. And I shall be older, certainly. The romantic notion that I would die young has expired with forgiveness.

And now: I want to live, in perseverance and stubborn generosity; and every day, I want to start with a clean slate on the board of my compassion.

What time is it? I have no clue. I do not own a watch and my cellphone has been off since the very early hours of this morning, when I was just getting to be bed after a night of seeing old friends and playing cards until we began to feel drunk from exhaustion.

I think of them — my friends, my kind people, my kind man — as I walk, and I can see the white tents the hippies and the hopefuls have pitched behind a plastic barricade. They’re all so specific, I get inspired to see them in a book:A long novel about perseverance and stubborn generosity; an epic story in which its heroine travels toward her forgiveness.

“When you forgive — you love.”

Someone else has written that in a romantic story about dying young. I don’t want to do that: I want to live.

Yes, I want to live.

We purchase things that only speak to our taste buds: Black grapes and persimmons. Sun-dried tomato pesto and horseradish hummus. Sweet white corn and purple peppers. I watch a tiny curly creature with my baby-fat face and a unibrow dancing around her mother’s bicycle, in a pink tutu and leopard uggs. I look away when she tickles my eyes with tears only to find a brown face, even tinier, resting over a sari-draped shoulder of her East Indian mother. Live, my darling child. I want you — to live.

My kind comrade and I walk over to the handmade soap store: I want more smells of home. We both notice her: She is African and tall — PROUD — with dreadlocks and a pair of bohemian overalls. How could you not notice her: Her face belongs to a heroine traveling toward her own forgiveness.

“Are you doing okay?” a very gentle gentleman asks us from behind the counter.

I smile into the jar of eucalyptus body butter and nod: Zen.

“How could they not be okay, here?” the heroine making a rest stop on her journey toward forgiveness says.

We laugh. All four faces in this store are calm. They are calm with innocence long traded-in for survival. But then again, maybe it’s just compassion. (And I’m helpless — against it.)

“I was riding my motorcycle this morning,” my proud heroine starts telling us a fable from her previous day. Her long story.

At the end of it, we would laugh. Not wanting anything from each other, but having so much to give back, we laugh with lightness.

We laugh — with nothingness, in a Kundera sorta way.

I think: We are no longer innocent. But that’s quite alright, I think.

Because with enough forgiveness, compassion often takes its place. Compassion takes the place of innocence. And that’s quite alright, I think. And I want to live — a life of that.